![]() A stepchild of sorts to American Idol and Project Runway, it puts a group of aspiring or established drag queens in competition against each other in a series of challenges that test their skills in costume design, performance and showmanship. That speaks easily to the success of the Drag Race format. And that brings me back to all drag is valid, and all drag is welcome.” I think that trans women do drag just like biological women do drag, just like trans men do drag. When I tackle the subject with her, she readily admits she “can’t speak on behalf of trans people”.īut, she adds, “what I can say is my experience in drag is that trans women have always been present in the drag that I know of, growing up in New York City. Visage, as a cisgender woman, is perhaps unqualified to comment. The complicated cultural side note – how drag interacts with trans culture, whether it is offensive, whether there is a trans perspective on drag – is a thorny issue for some. RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under judges Michelle Visage, RuPaul and Rhys Nicholson. It’s the community that I always walk hand in hand with because they have always been my family.” “I will never get famous and then forget about the gay community. “And I thought, I will never leave, I will never go back,” she says. Visage, who appears on the US, UK and Australian editions of the Drag Race format, says she felt like she had found her place. “It was the first time I found my family, my people, and no, I wasn’t gay I was this lower-middle class, white girl from South Plainfield, New Jersey, who wouldn’t be a likely candidate – cisgender heteronormative presenting – and then they welcomed me in.” For me, a kid from central New Jersey, I jived with the thought of somebody being able to be who they want to be. “Even the word ‘queer’ back then, it was offensive and now, beautifully, it’s been reclaimed. “I didn’t really know much else except I liked the way it looked, and it was very queer,” she says. RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under judge Michelle Visage first saw drag when she was 17. ![]() They were complete with showgirls, sequins and 11 o’clock numbers, those show-stopping songs that close out big-ticket musicals. When the gay community was wholly outside the mainstream, drag shows were its off-off-Broadway, a kind of razzle-dazzle that turned the back corner of a neighbourhood gay bar into a smudged reflection of the New York stage.
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